Although many voters know the UK is spending huge amounts on Net Zero, it’s not always obvious what this looks like in practice. Where exactly is all this money flowing out from?
Today’s article is about one rather generous channel: Innovate UK, “the UK’s innovation agency”. It is one of a number of ‘research councils’ that falls under the remit of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – a body that receives £8.9 billion per year from taxpayers.
As you can see below, Innovate UK was allocated £2,438 million for 2022-25:
With its large funds, Innovate UK has been dishing out tens of millions in grants to UK councils to help them achieve their Net Zero goals.
Without further ado, I’ve added a sample of some of the most expensive grants for Daily Sceptic readers to consider:
£4,964,210: Mission Net Zero Pathfinder Demonstrator
Bristol City Council (in conjunction with other councils in South West England)
March 2024 to November 2025
“Bristol people and businesses are very concerned about climate change,” reads the abstract of Bristol City Council’s grant. Its “Mission Net Zero Pathfinder Demonstrator” is designed to help businesses and communities reach “climate goals faster” and will (apparently) mean “people can achieve their climate goals, obtain investment in new ways and grow related businesses to benefit the whole community”.
£2,754,313: Peterborough Accelerated Net Zero (PANZ) Demonstrator
Peterborough City Council
March 2024 to November 2025
Peterborough says it “is embarking on an innovative approach to manage and reduce non-technical barriers that are hampering the ability to Net Zero initiatives at scale and speed.” This includes the creation of a “digital system that councils can use to design, manage and deliver net-zero projects“.
£2,565,883: Leicestershire CAN (Collaborate to Accelerate Net Zero) Demonstrator
Leicestershire County Council
March 2024 to November 2025
Leicester County Council claims its CAN Demonstrator “will create an environment for well-planned, deliverable, impactful place-based Net Zero interventions in Leicestershire, replicable to other LA areas”, and that “CAN-De… will create a self-sustaining model which is not reliant on future funding and can continue long after project completion.”
£2,522,874: Net Zero Terrace Streets
Rossendale Borough Council
March 2024 to August 2025
In 2023, Rossendale Borough Council received £72,069 from Innovate UK, to realise one “Net Zero Terraced Street”, and now it’s back with even more streets – taking the total of its “Net Zero Terraced Streets” project to £2,594,933. According to the council, its plan will address the following “**Problem**”:
The council also claims that the project “will support energy transition for left behind communities” and “reduce bills by over 80%”.
£2,424,157: Let zero: towards retrofit for cost-effective, healthier and Net Zero rented properties
South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority
March 2024 to September 2025
South Yorkshire says: “Let Zero is a project designed to help UK local authorities tackle the issue of poor housing conditions in the Private Rented Sector (PRS), including damp and mould and high carbon emissions.” It will use “AI-enabled” technology to help landlords upgrade their properties.
There are tens more Net Zero grants underway (to see a full list, click here), going towards very different things. For instance, Devon County Council (which Innovate UK awarded £299,745 to) recruited a “Net Zero Delivery and Innovation Officer” and Great Yarmouth Borough Council set about changing “citizen’s behaviour”:
To end, here’s a bar chart showing which councils have done best (currently) out of Innovate UK funding:
The bill for the above is £29,584,787(!)
And I’m afraid there’s more to go (as I have not covered past grants yet…)
Charlotte Gill regularly publishes about the use of taxpayers’ money to fund Left-wing causes and Left-wing researchers in Woke Waste, her Substack. You can subscribe here.
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It’s raining soup! Fetch a bucket!
Folly all facilitated by the public-sector laptop class well-educated in sophistry, sycophancy and word saladry, but ill-educated in critical thinking and common sense.
The reality is that this “largesse” is barely concealed money laundering. I doubt any of these Councils could realistically prove how they have spent their windfalls.
Lots of make-work, well paid fake jobs. But we are apparently so short of labour that we need millions of immigrants.
I am scratching my head at the claim that we need 18yr olds to drive trains due to a shortage of drivers. Given it is one of the most overpaid jobs in the country I struggle to see how there is not a queue forming for every vacancy.
Yeah it’s got to be cobblers
It’s perhaps an indication of the remuneration available to the Benefit Class?
And even if they did, there’s absolutely no way that they can demonstrate any effect on the climate. They have no way of measuring it, so any claim they make is pure handwaving.
How about a new action campaign;
”Just Stop Government”
We have too much tax, and too much official meddling, I feel that Government needs to slim down cut back and focus on defence, law and order, borders and Diplomacy, drop everything else.
Get government out of our lives;
”JUST STOP GOVERNMENT”
Yep. Look at this list of time wasting pen-pushers and paper shufflers. Everyone of them sucking value out of the British public. Add to this shower all the quangos and their hangers-on, the local government councils and their DEI mumbling zombies. Add still more the ‘Green’ grifters forcing up the price of energy while achieving f-all apart from turning productive pasture into solar panel desert.
What business has a borough council to “change citizen behaviour”? Citizens are entitled to behave in whichever way they want for as long as that’s not in conflict with applicable laws and borough councils certainly neither have the power to create laws nor are citizens their pets to train as they see fit.
Birmingham a bankrupt council that can’t even empty the bins, and raised council tax over the past 2 years by 17%. Why are we all still complicit with this? we still pay the council tax and for what? I live in a rural area, my council tax is 5000 per year, there are 2 of us in the house, the only thing we get is our bins collected the black every 3 weeks, likewise the recycle and if you want a green bin, well thats extra.
And think of those of us living alone and getting a measly 25% reduction in our council tax.
That’s small change if you add in all the wated money on “active travel”, Dutch roundabouts, LTNs’ etc. My own poverty-stricken council has a budget of close to £50m for such rubbish. Then there’s the money wasted in the Covid era. Sheffield City spent £££s converting the inner dual carriageway ring road into single-plus-cycle lane. Whilst queueing in the new arrangement I saw, and snapped, a cyclist! I wrote to the then Mayor, Mr Jarvis, claiming the prize for the rare spot. I think my message must have got lost in his spam folder.
So the **problem** is heat pumps too large & noisy, and electric boilers too expensive to run! That they haven’t realised we already have the answer – gas boilers, seems incredible. Can we have some new councils please! Oh yes, we are starting to – Reform.
There is huge waste in this country that could be used to steal less money from people so they could spend wherever they want on whatever they want and create growth. There are retards complaining that Donald can’t cut taxes or there will be problems. They may well have TDS or have missed how much money Elon is saving the taxpayers of America.
Only 29 million? That would hardly keep a week’s worth of ‘irregular’ immigrants in the style to which they are accustomed.
I’m sure all these Councils have made sure their drains are kept well and truly clear …. to flush down all this taxpayer money.
With that huge sum of money that Bristol Council has received, there must be a substantial reduction in CO2 levels in the atmosphere in Bristol. A small amount of money could be used to measure and publish the reduction there to show conclusively that all this fabulous, marvelous, limitless expenditure on Net-Zero is working. I wonder if anyone in Bristol Council has thought of doing this? I wonder how big the reduction will be? Makes sense to check this doesn’t it?